As in most fields, the rise of the internet and computing technology has upended the music industry in unfathomable ways. Over our lifetimes, the power record companies held over musicians and their work has dissipated into thin air; however, new forces such as Spotify and Apple music (or any other streaming platform) have established an entirely new hegemony within the industry. Think about it, how much music do we really pay for anymore?
The flat monthly fee many of us (myself included) pay for access to a streaming service leaves artists making less than one cent per single stream of their work. Despite neglecting fair compensation for artists and their work, streaming on the internet has become the standard unit of the music industry. Just about everything an artist does today is designed to help them maximize the amount of clicks on their content. Record label offices once dedicated to getting music on the radio, on television, or in the movies are now hubs of social media experts whose mission is to increase their artists’ followers. Artists themselves fall prey to the “common sense” created by the industry’s shift that devalued music by simply giving away tons of free content to remain fresh in the feeds of whatever social media app they want to increase their presence on. The popularity of streaming platforms and their consumer friendly costs have established a hegemony upon the music industry in which the actions of artists are sharply circumscribed by the market’s desire to maximize access to musical content while minimizing its cost.
There are bands and artists that buck these trends to an extent. Perhaps counter hegemonic, jam bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, and young bands like Vulfpeck represent a possible challenge to consensus and the integrity of “the horizon of the taken-for-granted.” Phish and the Dead cultivated large fan bases dedicated to enjoying live music that looks, sounds, and feels different every single night that forces fans (though they oblige willingly) to put money directly in the pockets of those they love. Vulfpeck’s brilliant 2014 album of all silence called “Sleepify,” released with a message telling their then small fanbase to stream the album during their sleep to fund a free tour, grossed over $20,000 before Spotify took the content down (more than enough to fund the short tour).
However, its tough to say if these are truly counter-hegemonic actions because they have been absorbed by the music industry. Phish and the Dead’s willingness to let fans tape and distribute shows (first through analog processes but later through the early internet in the 90s) is the very basis of streaming services now. Vulfpeck mastered crowd funding long before it started becoming more popular. Maybe the willingness of the industry to usurp their methods should be a measure of success for these counter-hegemonic practices. However, it also suggests that the industry’s hegemony over the masses is more powerful than previously understood since it can continuously adapt its practices to maintain profits while appeasing listeners.
I think it’s interesting that Spotify can be seen as both an opportunity for independent artists to counter the hegemony of the music industry by rendering record labels obsolete a well as, as you’ve mentioned, a reinforcement of the hegemony of the music industry through their practice of hardly paying artists for streams.
Your example of Vulfpeck’s “Sleepify” album was a brilliant counter to Spotify’s oppressive nature, though it does rely on Spotify’s compliance in order for the effort to be effective in other cases.
I wonder what is the effect of other streaming platforms like Tidal, which is founded by music artists and created in response to the low pay cuts Spotify gives artists. Beyonce and Jay-Z, for example, protest Spotify by only releasing their music on Tidal. Do actions like these really have an effect on Spotify’s success, and even if a brand like Tidal succeeds, is it doomed to fall into its own type of hegemony over the music industry as Spotify did?